Over the past few years, more devices are starting to include batteries or other renewable/rechargeable sources of power. These devices often need to convey their power settings to a host personal computer (PC), but due to the lack of a standardized protocol with the PC, various independent hardware vendors (IHVs) choose not to implement this support. In general, there are a host of problems in the industry due to lack of consistency in the manner in which to report power. In but a few examples, these problems may include:
First, IHVs create random User Interfaces (UI): Due to the lack of a uniform or standardized manner to report battery strength for example, various IHVs choose to implement their own software on PCs to display this type of information. This level of innovation may be suitable for competition between IHVs, but often confuses the end user. Also, IHVs create software that exists in control panels, in the system tray, for instance, and often on the computer desktop for their specific hardware. Thus, the user does not have a standard location where they can navigate to see the battery strength of their respective devices, for example.
Secondly, problems include lack of reporting when power is low: Most laptops today have smart batteries that can report to the operating system (OS), through standardized calls (e.g., ACPI), the charge left in the battery. When the battery is running weak, the laptop can send a notification to the user to charge the laptop or turn it off to prevent loss of data or productivity; or can choose to take action itself (e.g., save all data and hibernate to prevent loss in terms of critically low battery).
Another problem relates to smart algorithms to prolong battery life: Since most laptops today report battery strength in a standardized way to the operating system, the OS could potentially have the opportunity to perform smarter tasks to prolong the life of the battery by performing actions like slowing down the processor, turning down WiFi radios, decreasing screen brightness, and so forth. While this can also be performed by the device itself, this operation may be computationally expensive and may not have all the information to calculate this as accurately as the PC. However, since there is no standardized procedure to report a device's charge to an operating system, there is no current process for controlling or prolonging the life of the charge on a device, for example.
Other problems with current reporting systems, is poor diagnose-ability: For instance, when a wireless device stops functioning with the PC it is very difficult to diagnose the source of the problem. If the user had a procedure to visit a common area that identified all devices around their PC and observe the battery strength on the respective devices, for instance, they may be able to observe the low power status on all devices (or receive notifications of low power) and thus, replace batteries in time. There is currently no standardized process to report an external device's battery power to a PC. Though there are a number of different values that could potentially be reported through system transports, there is currently no standardized mechanism for exploiting such values.